Contemporary Challenges Facing the Small Farmers in the Green Scheme Projects in Namibia

Martin Shapi

Abstract

The paper uses a combination of theory and both quantitative and qualitative evidence to demonstrate the significance and challenges of agricultural development in Namibian green scheme projects. For quantitative, a structured questionnaire to produce descriptive statistics was administered to 135 small farmers while eight (8) project manager who were interviewed at the studied schemes as key informant served as source of qualitative information that pin pointed out challenges and opportunities, faced by the small farmers in these schemes. The evidence points to the fact that although there are myriad of challenges, such as challenges related to production, access to efficient and effective market and access to credit faced by farmers, production and access to efficient and effect market challenges emerged as the most stumbling blocks to the optimal production and sales of small farmers’ produce. Usually access to agricultural credit is seen as one of the major challenges of smallholder farmers in Africa. In this study access to agricultural credit was less seen as a major stumbling block to the smallholder farmers’ productivity. This is attributed to the current farmers’ agricultural credit support scheme in place between Agricultural Bank of Namibia (Agribank) and the government of Namibia.